I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been a fan of TPM for several years now and am looking forward to being part of such a talented team. It may come as no surprise that this site, Heat City, took some of its early cues from TPM’s success. Talking Points Memo began 11 years ago as a one-man blog written by Josh Marshall. Today, it’s staffed by some two dozen people and has been credited for breaking open a few of the biggest U.S. political scandals in recent years.

One of the best parts of this move is that I’ll still get to write stories about Arizona from time to time, but now for a much larger audience. I have a lot of affection for this state. I got my journalistic start here, and I’ve called it home on and off for the better part of 16 years. In the past few years alone, that’s given me a chance to cover some remarkable people and stories. I’m glad to continue writing about it. So if we’ve talked in the past or if you’ve ever sent a tip my way, please keep in touch. Your insight will be as valuable as ever.

In the meantime, I want to thank everyone who has supported my work here on Heat City. Whether through a donation to the site, a prominent link somewhere or even just a kind email, this site was able to break some pretty good stories and win some awards because of your help. So thanks. Recently, the site has grown pretty quiet, mostly because I’ve been so busy as a freelancer. I suppose that means this is also a good time to call it quits here. I will keep the site online for archival purposes. But I don’t have any plans to publish stories here anymore.

I’m looking forward to what’s next. I hope you’ll join me for it.

Click for two-page PDF.

The top law enforcers from 21 states asked Phoenix’s Village Voice Media Holdings on Tuesday to shut down the adult services section of its popular Backpage.com, saying ads for prostitution and child trafficking “are rampant on the site.”

The call from the attorneys general comes just weeks after the online classified ad giant Craigslist reluctantly removed its own adult listings because of growing criticism from law enforcement and child advocacy groups nationwide.

“We sincerely hope Backpage, like Craigslist, will finally hear the voices of the victims, women and children, who plead with it to make this important change,” the attorneys general wrote in a letter sent to Village Voice attorney Samuel Fifer. “We believe that ads for prostitution — including ads trafficking children — are rampant on the site and that the volume of these ads will grow in light of Craigslist’s recent decision.”

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard was not among the 21 attorneys who signed the letter.

Lawyers for Village Voice, which owns the Phoenix New Times and 13 other alternative weekly newspapers nationwide, did not respond to requests for comment from numerous media outlets.

But the company just so happened to address some of the same concerns in a statement posted to its website on Sunday. The statement focused on a lawsuit filed last week in Missouri by a girl who said she became a victim of child prostitution at age 14 thanks in part to the fact that her pimp was allowed to advertise on Backpage.com.

The newspaper chain said it cooperates willingly with law enforcement whenever the case involves minors, as it did in the case of the Missouri girl, whose pimp pleaded guilty to federal prostitution charges earlier this month.

“Backpage.com has stringent safeguards in place to ensure that only adults use the site,” the company’s statement said. “We provided the FBI with the perpetrator’s I.P. address and credit-card information.”

The company said law enforcement agencies have asked for its help in only five cases involving minors despite the fact that there have been six million adult postings on its site.

Still, the fight for Village Voice Media is a financial one, too. While most classified ads on Backpage.com are free to post, the adult services section makes advertisers pay $5 for each listing.

A report by the AIM Group, a media and advertising research firm, recently estimated the ads have brought in $17.5 million in revenue for Village Voice Media. The firm also said its research found the ads on Backpage.com were “considerably more graphic and explicit than Craigslist ads.”

The attorneys general noted the money angle in its letter to Village Voice Media.

“We recognize that Backpage may lose the considerable revenue generated by the adult services ads,” they wrote. “Still, no amount of money can justify the scourge of illegal prostitution, and the misery of the women and children who will continue to be victimized, in the marketplace provided by Backpage.”

There’s only one company allowed to decide which businesses are the “Best of Phoenix.” At least that’s the message the Phoenix New Times is sending to anyone hoping to use the trademarked name of the newspaper’s annual list of what’s hot in town.

The alternative weekly and its parent company, Village Voice Media Holdings, filed their second federal lawsuit in less than a week on Wednesday against someone who owns a website domain name using the phrase “best of Phoenix,” which the newspaper trademarked back in 1997.

This time, the suit was brought against a Rochester, N.Y. man named Jeff Rogers, who operates the website thebestofphoenix.org.

According to the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Arizona, Rogers was using the site as a directory of top-rated businesses in Phoenix and asking companies to pay an annual fee to be on it.

Lawyers for the Phoenix New Times claim in the lawsuit that this violates the company’s 13-year-old federal trademark on the term “Best of Phoenix,” which it uses as the title of an annual issue highlighting outstanding businesses, people and events in the area.

Under the registration through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office [pdf], Village Voice Media has the exclusive right to use the phrase in connection with lists of businesses and services.

The newspaper and VVM are demanding that Rogers take down his website, give them any profits he made off of it and pay as much as $100,000 in damages.

At least the first of the newspaper’s demands may have already happened.

On Friday morning, Rogers’ website was fully functional. It told visitors to nominate companies for the list by sending an email. “The Best of Phoenix site was designed to give you listings of the best services in Phoenix from reputable companies,” it said.

But then Heat City sent Rogers an email asking for comment on the lawsuit.

Twenty-nine minutes later, he responded with a short message: “I don’t have any comments on it, but to the best of my knowledge, there is no such site active at this time.”

Sure enough, the website had been taken down. Before it was pulled, however, Heat City was able to take a screen grab of the home page.

In subsequent emails, Rogers said he removed the site when he found out about the trademark.

“We are a very small business,” he said in an email, “and once I found it (sic) that it was trademarked and may be illegal, I made them take it down. We wont be reactivating the site at all. On to other projects for us.”

The lawsuit, however, shows that Rogers likely knew about the trademark more than a month ago. He was contacted on July 26 by a lawyer from Village Voice Media, telling him that the site was breaking the law and demanding it be taken down.

The home page for Rogers’ company, Webniche Marketing, shows that it operates other similar sites such as thebestofsyracuse.org and thebestofalbany.org. None of those websites appear to be in cities that have other Village Voice newspapers.

The new lawsuit comes on the heels of a similar suit filed by the newspaper a week ago. In that case, the New Times accused a former employee of buying the domain names bestofphoenix2011.com and bestofphoenix2012.com and attempting to sell them back to the newspaper for a higher price, a practice known as cybersquatting.

Both lawsuits land just weeks before the newspaper is scheduled to publish its 2010 edition of its Best of Phoenix list, which it is already heavily promoting with billboards and other ads.

The annual publication is a lucrative one for the newspaper, with the print edition packed thick with ads from local companies. The same formula, complete with trademarked names and branded websites, is used by Village Voice-owned newspapers all across the nation.

Contacted by phone on Friday, New Times attorney Steve Suskin said “the lawsuit speaks for itself.” He declined to comment further, but when asked whether the newspaper planned to file lawsuits against anyone else in the near future, he replied: “Not to my knowledge.”

The Phoenix New Times is well on track to publishing its Best of Phoenix 2010 issue later this month, with billboards and ads already heralding its arrival. But it turns out the next two years of the newspaper’s annual hot list have already hit a road block.

The alternative weekly and its parent company, Village Voice Media Holdings, filed a federal lawsuit Friday against one of the newspaper’s former employees, accusing him of Internet piracy and trademark violations for cybersquatting on the website domain names bestofphoenix2011.com and bestofphoenix2012.com.

The newspaper is demanding that the ex-worker, Ty Liebig of Phoenix, surrender the domain names and pay them as much as $200,000 in damages for refusing to give up the URLs when asked.

In an email late Monday, Liebig said, “I’m not aware of any lawsuit against me at this time.” He did not comment any further. He also has not responded to the lawsuit in court.

At stake for the newspaper and its parent company is a formula that has been successful for years.

The annual Best of Phoenix list, which highlights outstanding businesses, people and events throughout the Phoenix area, is a financial boon for the paper, with its printed version packed thick with ads from companies that are either on the list or hope to be someday.

The strategy for Village Voice Media, a Phoenix-based company that owns the largest chain of alternative weekly newspapers in the U.S., has been so successful that it replicates the list at its publications all across the nation.

As part of the local strategy, the Phoenix New Times buys specific, branded URLs to promote its annual issue and get readers to vote for their favorite businesses and people. This year, for example, the company has been pointing people to bestofphoenix2010.com. Last year it was bestofphoenix2009.com.

According to the lawsuit, Liebig likely recognized the success during the brief time he worked at the newspaper in 2008.

Though the lawsuit didn’t say exactly what position he had there, it did say Liebig worked at the newspaper from May 1 until Aug. 11 of that year, a little more than three months in all. It was during that short stint, the company alleges, that Liebig purchased the two Best of Phoenix domain names for himself.

Later, when the newspaper went to buy domain names through the year 2020, it discovered Liebig already owned them for 2011 and 2012.

Now, the newspaper claims it has a right to the website URLs that Liebig purchased because it owns the federal trademark for the term “Best of Phoenix,” which it was awarded back in 1997.

Liebig’s position is simple, according to the lawsuit: He wants to get paid.

As part of the suit, the company produced a series of emails sent between Liebig and Village Voice Media corporate staffers in early August.

“VVM aggressively defends its right to the exclusive use of this mark, and it would be compelled to take legal action against anyone infringing on this mark,” corporate executive administrator Elissa Blabac wrote in one of the emails on Aug. 3.

She went on to say that the value of the domain names was “less than zero” to anyone except the newspaper and its parent company because anyone else could be sued for violating the trademark.

Blabac demanded that Liebig turn over the domain names within 48 hours or face the consequences.

Liebig responded the next day: “I am open to and willing to sell those domains,” he wrote. “I still have not received an offer or what you said you considered ‘fair value.’”

A month later, the lawsuit was filed.

John Hay, the lawyer representing Village Voice Media, had little to say about the matter when he was reached on Monday. “The lawsuit basically speaks for itself,” he said.

He declined to comment about whether the company expected to win as much as $200,000 in damages it was demanding from Liebig. He said it would be up to the judge whether to award any money.

“It happens,” Hay said. “But what we’re really looking for is to get those websites back.”

Of the many blogs written by outside contributors to the Arizona Republic‘s website, Bill Richardson’s was perhaps the most critical of the region’s police and their practices.

Now, the retired Mesa police officer says the the state’s largest newspaper has given in to outside pressure from those who wanted his criticism silenced. The newspaper closed down his blog, deleted all his old posts and blocked him from even commenting elsewhere on its website.

“The Republic called me and told me it was being shut down,” Richardson said in an email to Heat City on Tuesday. “They shut down everything and even wiped out my Republic account where I can comment on other people’s blogs or columns.”

Richardson said one of the paper’s opinion editors, Joanna Allhands, called him Monday to tell him the blog was being yanked because of recent posts he had written about the Tempe Police Department.

That decision, Richardson said, came after the department’s police chief, Tom Ryff, and one of his advisers complained about the blog to the Republic.

“The Tempe PD was pissed about my hitting them on crime issues,” Richardson said, pointing to four posts he wrote since the beginning of August, including one in which he said the city “continues to lead the region in violent crime.”

But reached by phone late Tuesday, Allhands flatly denied the move was made because of Richardson’s criticism of Tempe.

“No, that’s not correct,” she said when asked about the allegation. Still, she refused to explain why Richardson’s blog was closed or why his entire archive was deleted from the website.

Allhands called the matter “an internal decision” and referred all other questions to the newspaper’s top editor, Randy Lovely.

Lovely’s assistant, meanwhile, said he was on vacation until next week and would not likely return any phone calls before then.

Click for a larger look at the way Richardson’s blog looked after the Arizona Republic shut it down.

A Tempe police spokesman also denied that the agency had anything to do with the Republic‘s decision, saying no one there had even voiced concerns about Richardson’s blog.

“To answer your question, no,” Sgt. Steve Carbajal said. “Nobody from the department, including the chief, has made a complaint to the Republic.”

Carbajal said a journalist with another news organization had called to look into the matter on Monday and that was the first he’d heard about it.

Regardless of why, however, it’s clear that the Republic has taken the unusual step of scrubbing Richardson’s work from its website without any public explanation.

Richardson, who also occasionally wrote for the newspaper’s op-ed page, said he was invited by the Republic to start blogging last year.

Since then he has written dozens of posts, many of them focusing on issues in law enforcement as well as in Tempe (that’s where he lives.) He was often critical of police policies, but he sometimes wrote positive stories about local law enforcement, too.

Now, visitors to his former home on the web are greeted with a simple message: “The blog requested does not exist.”

Except that’s not entirely true either; Google cached most of Richardson’s posts from the time he started writing the blog. They are, at least for now, available to anyone who wants to read them.

Heat City was hoping to get its hands on a nice, colorful police report about the attack on a Phoenix television news crew earlier this week. But we found out Friday it’s not going to happen.

It turns out the KPHO (Channel 5) crew never pressed charges against the man who threw some large rocks at them Wednesday while they were on assignment in Casa Grande.

Tim Gaffney, a spokesman for the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office, said he reached out to the station after watching video of the attack, which showed reporter Pat McReynolds dodging the stones. (Neither McReynolds nor his videographer were hit.)

“I actually called Channel 5 and asked if he wanted to prosecute,” Gaffney said on Friday. “They told me no.”

The rock thrower, whose name has not been released, was never arrested, Gaffney said.

A story posted on KPHO’s own website appeared to have said something different on Thursday. The story said the news crew was accusing the man of assault, which would be a serious criminal charge.

But Gaffney double-checked and confirmed, again, that no arrest had been made.

Heat City left a message for Michelle Donaldson, the news director at KPHO, but have yet to hear back from her.

File it under the dangers of being a journalist. In this must-watch video, Phoenix television news reporter Pat McReynolds and a videographer dodge rocks being thrown at them by a man they were hoping to interview.

Here’s how their station, KPHO (Channel 5), said it went down:

When a CBS 5 News crew went to the Torres house in Casa Grande to get his family’s side of the story, the brother of Frank Torres greeted them with a litany of profanity before they ever got to the yard.

He refused to answer questions. When the reporter and videographer didn’t leave as quickly as he wanted, he picked up several large rocks and hurled them at the news crew, they said.

The headline on the KPHO story said the “CBS 5 news crew accuses Casa Grande man of assault,” but the man was never arrested.

UPDATE (Aug. 27, 2010): Our original version, based on the story on KPHO’s website, said the rock-thrower had been arrested. We found out Friday he hadn’t. This story has been updated to reflect that.

Turns out the editors over at Phoenix magazine named me the best blogger in the Valley for my work here on Heat City. Here’s what they wrote in their annual Best of the Valley issue:

Favoritism, shmavoritism – the Valley’s best blogger is PHOENIX magazine contributor Nick R. Martin, whose independently-produced Heat City news blog (heatcity.org) is a true marvel of D-I-Y journalism. Competing against entire newsrooms at The Arizona Republic and other newspapers, Martin took first place in breaking news at the most recent Arizona Press Club Awards for getting the scoop on a series of arrests related to the 2004 bombing of the Scottsdale diversity office. And he essentially performed this service for free, since Heat City is funded by public donations.

I was surprised and honored. The issue landed in subscriber mailboxes this week, making perfect timing for my transition back to freelancing and writing on Heat City. Hopefully the work here will continue to live up to the title.

You can see a handful of Phoenix‘s other picks on its website. But the whole September issue is worth buying on newsstands when it comes out. It features enough to do in the Phoenix area to keep you entertained for months.

Oh, and for full disclosure: I have contributed a number of stories to Phoenix magazine in the past two years. However, I wasn’t part of the editorial process for this issue. And I am not being paid to write this post.

We parted ways amicably last week, about a month and a half into my tenure there. In that time, I wrote a few good stories, offered some ideas on technology/social media and got to work with some seriously talented journalists.

While I won’t bore anyone with the details of my departure, I will say that I have great respect for the Guardian and the big impact it has had on Arizona politics given its newcomer status. I wish everyone there the best of luck moving forward.

For now, I intend to return to freelancing and exploring other journalistic opportunities. You may have noticed I also came back to Heat City today with a story about Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s massive campaign spending. You can expect to see more stories here in the immediate future.

Finally, and this really can’t be said often enough: Thank you to all my readers and fans for your constant and continued support. You make the work worth doing.

As always, email me at nick@heatcity.org with comments or story ideas.

Starting this week, my work will be appearing regularly on the political news site, the Arizona Guardian. The specifics are still being worked out, but the broad outline was hatched over the long Fourth of July weekend. I’ll be covering a number of political races as well as helping the Guardian grow as a company. This is a great opportunity to work with a fledgling company that has a bright future.

Yes, the Guardian is a paid-subscription site, which means you’ll have to pony up some cash to read it. You may remember I wrote a fairly in-depth profile about the company last year in Phoenix magazine. At the time, I said it was too expensive for most people, but the company’s target readers — lobbyists, lawyers and politicians — were often willing to pay the price because it gives them the kind of news they need for success.

That model has worked for the Guardian so far. Now, the founders are hoping to build on that accomplishment. They are open to new ideas and experiments, and that’s where I’ll be playing a role. What does that mean specifically? I’ll let you know once we figure it out.

Heat City will still be here. This site will remain a place for me to write stories that don’t have a home anywhere else. The only difference now is that my political (and sometimes legal) stories will be appearing in the Arizona Guardian.

As a special offer for readers of Heat City, the Guardian is also offering a 60 percent discount to new subscribers. This means individual readers can get access for just $12 a month (down from $30) and businesses, such as law firms, news organizations and creative agencies, can give all their employees access for just $60 a month (down from $150). When you sign up, simply enter the coupon code heatcity for your discount.

Finally, if you’ve been one of the generous people who has financially supported Heat City over the past year and a half, we are planning something special for you. Look for it in your email box over the next week.